Charli XCX is set to drop a new song, ‘In The City’, featuring Sam Smith next week.

The track, which is expected to appear on the singer’s forthcoming sixth album, is set to drop on Thursday (October 19). It is the first single Charli has released since ‘Speed Drive’, which features on the Barbie soundtrack and contains an interpolation of Toni Basil’s hit ‘Mickey’.

Last week, the artist shared a snippet on the track on her social media, which appears to be an upbeat dance-pop track and the lyrics “I never thought I would find it, but I found what I was looking for/I found it in the city, in the dark/In the city, in your heart” can be heard.

Charli recently confirmed she had begun working on the follow-up to last year’s ‘Crash’. Last month, she shared several photos and a video on her Instagram in a gallery captioned “album 6 i guess”. The post included a photo of her holding a notebook evidently full of lyrics for a song called ‘The Apple’, another of her producer and creative director A.G. Cook and one of her with The 1975‘s George Daniel.

in the city 🤍 oct 19 https://t.co/8drk1WNOc3 pic.twitter.com/iVHJc6J29l

— Charli (@charli_xcx) October 13, 2023

Meanwhile, last week, Charli was one of the scores of names from across the entertainment world who spoke out against Rishi Sunak and the Tory government’s anti-trans comments and policies following the party’s conference in Manchester.

Sunak said in his speech on the final day of the conference that he believes that people cannot “be any sex they want to be”. “It also shouldn’t be controversial for parents to know what their children are being taught in school about relationships, patients to know when hospitals are talking about men or women,” he added.

“And we shouldn’t get bullied into believing that people can be any sex they want to be. A man is a man, a woman is a woman, that’s just common sense.”

Charli XCX took to X to say she was “absolutely disgusted by the continued violence towards the trans community by this current Uk government,” adding: “the transgender and non binary communities face discrimination and prejudice every day and this absolutely ridiculous and uncalled for attack on transgender healthcare is just another violent act of hatred.”